


Walking on a Wire

by mytimehaspassed



Category: Savages (2012), Savages - All Media Types, Savages Series - Don Winslow
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 11:20:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/609264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mytimehaspassed/pseuds/mytimehaspassed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chon never buried bodies in the desert.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Walking on a Wire

**WALKING ON A WIRE**  
SAVAGES  
Ben/O/Chon  
 **WARNINGS** : Spoilers for the movie's ending, but small elements of both the books; depictions of non-graphic murders.

  
**1.**

Chon never buried bodies in the desert.

The dust that settled over the bleeding corpses of the men in Afghanistan and Iraq, whether native or not, was brushed away by the uniformed medics on both sides of the war or, whenever possible, IEDs and the wire-strapped flak vests of suicide bombers. The war in the desert was the infringement of law in what was said to be a lawless place, and that meant democracy and, unlike in America, bloodshed with impunity.

There was violence and there were bodies and there was Chon and his cold gaze through the scope of his rifle, the grit of his teeth, and the quick pop, pop, pop of his ammunition hitting something that used to be alive.

There was Chon, and Chon was a sharp-toothed, cold-blooded killer that never gave a thought to where the boys – because, let’s be honest, most of them were just boys – ended up after he took aim and spent his fateful magazine. There was Chon, and Chon was the sweat and dirt and gristle of something that moves quickly through the war with no real desire to be anywhere but there, in the heat, in the dust, in the explosion that left him wounded and scarred and unfit for duty, honorably discharged.

There was Chon.

 

**2.**

Chon buries bodies in California.

It’s mostly selfless.

 

**3.**

They have rules for the business. They have rules for the growers and the pushers and they have rules for Ben, who sees rules as one of the last centrifuges between man and animal, but nobody, not even Ben, has rules for Chon.

Chon does what he does and doesn’t tell Ben, who would get this queasy, pained look on his face and have a lecture ready on the tip of his tongue if he knew half the shit that Chon pulled, and they work in this peaceful, harmonious setup for years before the fuckup with Chon’s dad.

After that, Ben asks Chon to tell him everything, and Chon does sometimes, the lesser stuff, like breaking a kid’s nose because he forgot, in the way that stoners sometimes lie and smile and pass off their stinginess as forgetfulness, to pay for an eighth that was loaned to him on credit. He doesn’t tell Ben about the bullets he’s spent, doesn’t tell Ben about the bodies he’s buried with cold hands in the middle of the night.

He asks Ben to tell him everything, though.

And Ben does.

 

**4.**

Chon only has two rules for himself.

Protect O and Ben.

Fuck everybody else.

 

**5.**

Ben is more than just the moral compass that Chon never abides by, he’s something tangible, he’s something ethereal, and he’s something that Chon has never had a hard time swallowing, Ben’s easy smile and the way his fingers light Chon up like mortar fire.

Ben kisses him sometimes, after O shotguns smoke into his mouth, and it’s like he’s in the desert again, dry and hot and deeply important, Ben’s lips moving on his lips, his fingers gripping Ben’s hair, pushing him closer and closer, Ben’s hands warm and gentle and stroking across his chest. O will watch them and smile, pulling in smoke from the blunt in her fingers and puffing it out in rings.

Ben doesn’t mind that Chon is so needy, just like he doesn’t mind that O is jealous sometimes, taking Ben and then Chon into her mouth, pushing each of them away when they get too close to each other, her long red fingernails scratching sharp on the insides of their thighs.

 

**6.**

O is nothing like Ben, and that might be why Chon finds her so appealing.

What Chon doesn’t find in Ben, O gives, her pert mouth and lithe body and the way she doesn’t mind that Chon will come home with blood underneath his fingernails, shrugging it away with an impersonal tilt of his head. O loves him for who he is, just like Ben does, and Chon rewards her for that, fucking her long and hard and in Ben’s absence.

Unlike Ben, she doesn’t remind him of the desert.

And, most of the time, that’s okay.

 

**7.**

Chon doesn’t analyze the want he has for both of them.

He’s not Ben, he didn’t grow up with two aging, liberal psychologists who grew him with literature and art. He doesn’t know why he wants the things he wants, but he knows that he wants them both, that they compliment each other and that he, in turn, compliments them.

And that he will fuck and fight and scrape his bloody knuckles raw for them.

That he will fucking kill for them.

 

**8.**

Elena La Reina was right in the way that Ben and Chon love each other more than the way they express it sometimes, that they do what they do together because they were bred for it, born in the trade, and found each other along the way.

She was wrong about O, though; wrong about a lot of things regarding O, and that could have been her downfall, the queen that lost control of her kingdom because of some skinny rich gringa and the men who loved her, but that’s not what Chon hears from the inside, where she spends a measly six months on soft charges before her lawyers find some extraneous fault in the case that allows a judge to overturn her conviction and then retire on the tax-free number of zeros that found its way into his offshore account.

What Chon hears is that Elena La Reina was weak and, overall, a woman in a place where woman are not, and will never be, allowed. She inherited the cartel by blood, and it only takes the amount of time for Chon to price out a ticket to Mexico before he hears that she has lost the cartel through even more, gunned down in her own house, hand still stretched out to her dying daughter.

 

**9.**

Chon hides the news of the funeral from Ben and O by kissing and licking and fucking both of them, together and apart, his rough skin on O’s soft, curving parts, his smooth lips on the angle of Ben’s throat.

They spend three days in bed before O corners him in the shower one morning, asking him over the heady rush of the water what the fuck was going on, her eyes shimmering with tears just like when she wants to, and doesn’t want to, ask him if he’s going back to war. Just like that video of her through the digital grain of his computer screen, before Chon almost pulled his trigger in his own mouth.

He grabs her wrist, his thumb pressing on her pulse point, and tells her slowly, softly, and makes her promise not to tell Ben, which she doesn’t, only because she’s afraid that the Buddhist in Ben would win the war between his feelings of guilt and relief.

Chon kisses her sweetly, then, and O draws in a breath that’s almost a sob.

 

**10.**

Ben finds out, anyway.

He spends a week away from Chon and O, who had looked blankly at him, looked vaguely bitter, but not at all apologetic about not telling him, before he comes back with a split lip and a black eye, smelling like he drank himself through a whole alphabet of liquor bottles. O presses her fingers into the bruises until Ben winces and draws back, and then brushes her lips over the swelling, the dried blood, murmuring that she was sorry, she was sorry, she was so fucking sorry.

Chon opens and closes both of his fists once, twice, three times, and demands names, but Ben won’t play that game, never has, and ignores Chon until Chon presses him against the shoddy wooden frame of the door to their bedroom, his fingers curling around both of Ben’s biceps, squeezing. “Ben,” he says, and his voice is cold and angry, and it’s the same tone that he used with the cartel, the same tone that got them into trouble in the first place.

“No, Chon,” Ben says, and it’s Ben’s stern voice now, the closest he ever gets to asserting himself, the closest he ever gets to Chon’s aggressive tendencies.

“No,” he says, again, and Chon only backs down because, along with being extremely annoying, Ben’s stubborn pacifism is also the thing that Chon loves the most about him.

That doesn’t stop him from throwing his fist through the wall next to Ben’s head, though.

 

**11.**

It’s easy to find them.

The Pacific coast is awash with bars and drunks, and most of them are limber enough to brag about kicking some liberal college kid’s ass. Especially if he also happened to be a fag.

Chon’s too angry to teach them a lesson, but that doesn’t mean they don’t suffer first.

 

**12.**

He makes it look like an accident.

Nobody’s ever called him stupid.

 

**13.**

Actually, it’s Chon who suggests they go to Indonesia.

O balks and then asks dumb questions that make Ben laugh, about the people and the food and the wireless internet capabilities, but Chon only says anything because the words make Ben glow. Ever since Elena, he’s had a strange air about him, the same air that Chon gets before he starts another tour, before Ben goes away to help milk goats or build wells for starving children or whatever.

O noticed it, too, had said something in passing to Chon, who had taken it and made inquiries about the amount of wealth their money actually meant to another culture’s economy, and about what it would take to get over there and stay, stay happy, healthy, and safe, for a while, for forever. Chon made the calculations and figured that there were probably just as many men over there that needed killing as in the desert, as in America, and had booked the flights.

He had taken them both out for dinner, had posed the question with the plane tickets in his pocket, and had watched Ben grow into this happy version of his former self.

 

**14.**

And, O, well.

O will go wherever they do.

 

**15.**

There was Indonesia, and there was them.


End file.
